Factories, warehouses, workshops and other such areas often have floor surfaces on which dirt, heavy oil or other unwanted substances collect and adhere. In addition, paint and other coating materials must often be removed from walls and floors. Scarifying tools for removing such soilage or layers of coatings are known. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,185,350 issued to R. W. Fish shows an abrading tool for attachment to a hand-operated, rotary floor maintenance machine. The tool includes pairs of cutters centered on and perpendicular to a radial line extending from the rotational axis of the machine. The cutters roll on the surface to be worked as the machine turns the tool. The cutting elements are disc-like with a plurality of teeth around the perimeter thereof. As the floor machine translates forwardly and the tool rotates, individual cutting elements traverse a cycloidal-like path. Since the cutters are substantially tangential to the arcuate portions of the cycloidal-like path, they cut a relatively thin slice of soilage. Consequently, the cutters must traverse a relatively tight cycloid to ensure complete scraping. The machine must, therefore, turn at a very high speed or must be moved at a very slow translational speed. While the path has been described as a cycloid or cycloidal, in strict theory it is often referred to as a prolate cycloid.
Other scraping devices have used blades and discs as cutting elements. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,678,532 issued to R. L. Boyd shows a plurality of spaced banks of discs. Because of the wide spacing between elements, this abrading mechanism, too, must turn at a high rate in order for one bank of discs to scrape paths adjacent those of the other banks of discs and thereby completely scrape the floor.
These high speed rotary cutters lead to safety problems and, if not used carefully and skillfully, can abrade or scar the floor or surface to be cleaned.